The storm killed business at the store and Ophelia let everyone go early.
Dianna debated driving to Wegmans, loading up on cake, risotto, and a big bottle of cabernet and maybe binge-watching something that did not involve too much rain, creepy clients, lost time, and problems with expensive tattoos.
It was a good plan, but that’s not what she did.
Instead, she popped a very large umbrella, angled it into the wind, and pushed her way through the rain as she hurried along Boundary Street. The stores were going dark but the clubs lit the gloom with a hundred colors of neon and LED lights. Dianna sloshed past Othello’s, where some of the leather boys were smoking under the big awning. Past the open doors of Pallbearers, where the plaintive self-lament of Armor for Sleep’s “Car Underwater” was losing an argument with the thunder. She wasn’t in an emo mood. It was too early for Tank Girl, which always had good dance music once the dinner crowd moved out.
What was left?
Halfway down the block was a big neon sign that jutted out almost to the curb, and on it was the stylized silhouette of a beautiful woman in a torn white dress with wild hair. The heavy breeze conspired to give the tatters of cloth and tendrils of black locks the appearance of actual movement. Very effective. La Llorona, a coffeehouse by day and wine bar at night. Across the front of the store was a marquee with OPEN MIC POETRY SLAM in black block letters.
Part of her wanted to flee from the thought of poets baring their souls on a night when she wanted to just forget everything. But that part of her didn’t win the debate. She hurried down the street and slipped in out of the rain.
Inside it was warm and dark and the air was scented with coffee, whiskey, and baked goods. There were about two dozen people at the tables, filling nearly half the place. A bearded waiter in a lumberjack shirt was bringing drinks on a wooden tray while behind a small counter a woman with shocking magenta hair made drinks. Dianna found a table halfway to the stage but set aside from anyone close. She ordered a sake and gin martini and took her first sip as the manager stepped into a small circle of light in which was a wooden stool and a mic on a stand. He had a clipboard with the open mic sign-up sheet and called the next name.
“Let’s welcome Leza Cantoral.” There was real enthusiasm in the applause, suggesting the poet was either well known or had her entourage on deck. The woman who stepped into the spotlight was a short, curvy Xicana with wheat-colored hair over intentionally dark roots. Intense eyes that were a deep brown and accented with eyeliner that slashed backward, giving her a decidedly feline look. Very full lips and a strange little smile, as if she’d just told herself a joke but didn’t want to share it. She wore a black T-shirt with a hand-cut deep V-neck and with this on the front: I WAS A WITCH IN EVERY LIFETIME.
She removed a folded piece of paper from her jeans pocket, opened it, took the mic, and then looked out at the audience for a moment, letting things go quiet. Dianna reached out a bit with her senses and tried to get a read on the poet, and found a lot of darkness. Not negative, not born in her, but wrapped around the woman. As if she’d been through strange emotional landscapes and survived, but had memories and scars. Dianna could certainly relate. She sipped her drink and waited out the fall of silence in the place.
“This one’s about obsession,” Cantoral said in a slow and husky voice. “About how we can’t let some people go. Even I’m doing it with this poem. I’m obsessing on the way people obsess over Marilyn Monroe. We’re all necrophiles in our own ways. This is ‘A Series of Images to Convince You That She Is Dead.’”
Those dark eyes looked around, then the poet nodded to herself and began reading.
“A series of images that show her naked body in various poses … back when she was in the movies … some candids, outtakes, the ones that did not make the cut,
the ones with a big red X drawn across them … in red marker—her way to X out her imperfect selves.”
Cantoral’s voice was like smoke, coiling around the meanings and images.
“… this is a movie … you are watching it … it is old scratched film … Super 8 film. You are drinking. You are drunk. You don’t know why you are watching this.”
A breath in an otherwise silent room.
“… her eyes seem very alive … bright black in that projector glow … she is in a scene with other people—mostly men … but some women. There are a lot of bodies …
but it is somehow difficult to make her out, between the flesh and the ropes and the whips and the dogs, but then you start to recognize her body parts.”
A flash of those eyes.
“Cut to a morgue … and she looks different. Her face—deflated. Dimples gone … skin pale … more pale even than before.”
Cantoral’s lip curls in disgust.
“Back to the glamor shots—early ones, from before she was famous, before she bleached her hair … and became the movie star. Full bush, scared but bold eyes … a smile to hide the pain.”
Another breath.
“You think if you had loved her … if you had known her … you would have saved … protected her. But really … how?”
Cantoral’s eyes glittered like jagged pieces of obsidian. Sharp and dangerous.
“What was her alienation that wrapped her up like a thousand scarves … pulling and pushing her from intimacy … holding her body as a shield between herself … and anyone … absolutely anyone … because it hurts more to be hurt again … than to be alone, with familiar wounds. You still can’t believe she is dead though…”
There was a long moment before the applause began. Dianna glanced around and saw that the poem had hit some people more deeply than others. The ones who seemed indifferent to it, or who were possibly conjuring exactly the wrong kinds of Marilyn images, were fewer in number than those who seemed to get what the poet intended. Or, at least, get something deep for themselves.
“Damn…” breathed Dianna.
She finished her drink and stared into the empty depths of the glass. As she did so, her fingers absently—very absently—rubbed the place on her forearm where the beautiful rose had nearly faded away.